


Golden Flashbacks and The Seven Dwarves

by AngieInStL



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 11:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngieInStL/pseuds/AngieInStL
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A trip to the dentist brings back bad memories and confusion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Flashbacks and The Seven Dwarves

Jim hung up the phone and finished writing the note he had started. Captain Banks stuck his head out of his office and, not seeing both of the people he was looking for, bit back the bellow he had been about to let go.

“Where’s Sandburg?” Simon asked.

“I was just about to go pick him up and take him to the dentist,” Jim replied, “Having that root canal finished.”

The Captain blanched in sympathy, “Better him than me.”

“Yeah, me too,” Ellison agreed. “I have to drive him over and wait for him because they don’t want him driving.”

“From the dentist?” Simon asked in disbelief.

“Blair gets antsy about it so they’re doing it under sedation.” Jim had seen how relieved his young lover was at the idea after finding out that he’d have to spend over an hour in the dentist’s chair. It had been all he could stand to sit there long enough to have his teeth cleaned since the incident with Lash.

“Oh, that makes sense. I wish they would do that when I get my teeth cleaned. I swear that the hygienist at my dental office studied under Attila the Hun,” Simon replied.

Jim drove over to Rainier and spotted Blair coming down the steps from Hargrove Hall. He tapped the horn and pulled up to the curb. Sandburg opened the door and tossed his book bag into the seat before climbing in and fumbling with his seatbelt.

“You ready for this, Chief?”

Worried blue eyes glanced across the cab and he replied, “If I say no, can we go home instead?”

Stretching his arm across the back of the seat, Jim gave Blair’s shoulder a squeeze. “You’ve been suffering with that tooth long enough; it’s time to get it fixed and be done with it,” he said.

“But it doesn’t even hurt!” Blair protested. Jim sighed and gave his lover his patented ‘don’t lie to me because I know better’ look and the younger man crumbled. “Not as much as it did, anyway,” Blair amended.

At the dental office, Blair signed in and was given a clipboard with some papers to fill out. He sank gratefully into the chair next to Jim and began to write. Ellison smiled when, in response to the question about the relationship of the emergency contact, Blair whispered ‘lover’ as he wrote ‘friend.’

Once the paperwork was handed off to the helpful receptionist, Blair returned to his seat beside Jim. That he was nervous was painfully obvious. He crossed his legs, then uncrossed them. He dragged his fingers through his hair, then dug in his pocket for the leather tie to hold it back from his face. He shifted in the chair, leaned forward to pick up a magazine from the table, rifled through several before sighing loudly and sitting back in the chair.

“Will you try to relax?” Jim asked softly.

“Easy for you to say,” Blair quipped.

Jim reached out and placed his palm on the back of his lover’s neck and massaged gently. He noticed that a couple of the women in the waiting room looked away but he didn’t stop, Blair needed comforting and he wasn’t going to deny him. Gradually, he felt the taut muscles loosening and his lover rolled his shoulders as his eyes drifted closed. Blair was such a tactile person that it was almost comical how easily Jim could control him with a touch.

The door next to the receptionist’s desk opened and a young woman in a pastel green scrub top called Blair’s name. Sparing a panicked glance for Jim, Sandburg got up and followed her into the back of the office. Jim concentrated and he could hear the rapid, shallow breaths and racing heartbeat as Blair was shown into a room. He continued to listen as the woman explained that the pill would take about 15 minutes to take affect and that he was welcome to look at a magazine.

Knowing that his lover would be listening, Blair whispered, “I really wish you were back here with me, man.” He sat rigidly in the chair, his fingers digging into the padded armrests. In spite of the fact that it was cool in the room, he could feel a rivulet of sweat running down his back. He tried to let his head back against the headrest but his hair tie made it uncomfortable. Sitting up in the chair, he pulled the tie out and stuffed it into his pocket again. The nurse noticed his actions and came into the room.

“Are you alright, Mr. Sandburg?” she asked.

“Just nervous,” he replied.

She smiled sympathetically and moved to one of the machines in the corner. “Here, this will help you relax until the pill takes affect,” she said as she motioned for him to lean back in the chair. She arranged a black hose over his shoulder and opened a sealed plastic bag that held a clear mask. In a moment, she had the mask connected to the hose and placed it over his face, adjusting it with the elastic strings. “Just take regular, even breaths,” she said.

In the waiting room, Jim smiled; he knew they were giving Blair ‘laughing gas’ and figured that he would soon be putty in their hands. He picked up a newer copy of National Geographic and began to leaf through it, dialing his hearing back to a normal level.

About half an hour later, a blood-curdling scream sounded from the back of the office. Recognizing the voice, Jim leapt to his feet and opened the door to the exam rooms. He dodged the stunned nurse to get to the cubicle where the sounds were coming from. Something metal slammed against a wall and several small dental instruments skittered across the tiled hall. The dentist and another nurse blocked the doorway, both of them trying to soothe the terrified patient.

“Let me in there,” Jim said, parting the duo and edging between them. The room was small and crowded with the dental chair and an X-ray machine. Blair was on the floor behind the stout base of the chair, his feet scrabbling on the tile. Edging around the room until he could see his lover, Jim slowly knelt to be more on his level. Blair had something in his hands and he was brandishing it like a gun. “What’cha got there, Chief?” he asked, keeping his voice soft and calm.

“The fire people! They’re back! But I got them. Wanna see how I got them?” Blair asked. Jim looked down as a jet of water hit him in the chest. “They don’t like the water. They won’t come close enough for me to get them with it again.”

Taking a deep breath and blowing it out slowly, Jim counted to ten before he spoke. “Blair, I think you got them. They’re gone. Can you come out of there so I can see if they got you?” He held out his hand and leaned forward. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dentist slip into the doorway. Immediately, Blair began to scream, squeezing the trigger on the sprayer and hitting the tall, blond man in the face and chest.

“He’s back! Don’t let him get me! He thinks he can be me! But he doesn’t know about Naomi’s favorite color or what my first car was. Keep him away from me!” Blair yelled, abandoning the sprayer to try to crawl away from the doorway.

‘Lash,’ Jim thought, ‘Damn, what did they give him?’ He moved so that he was between the dentist and Blair, hoping to block his view. “Chief, calm down. I took care of Lash. Remember? I took him out at the warehouse. He’s gone.”

Blair looked up at him, fear and hope in every line of his young face. “You saved me,” he said, his voice thick with awe.

“That makes me your blessed protector, right?” Jim asked. When Blair nodded, Jim held out his hand and made a ‘come here’ motion to coax his partner out of the corner. “I won’t let anyone get you,” he soothed. To his surprise, Blair crawled over to him, curled up against his thighs and gave a relieved sigh as he nuzzled against Jim’s neck. Jim’s hand hovered over Blair’s shoulder as he felt his face growing warm. The nurse peeked in to see if it was safe to enter and Jim let his hand down, rubbing Blair’s shoulder to keep him calm.

“We’ve got to finish his dental work, he has an exposed nerve. He has a higher than normal tolerance for the sedative we gave him,” she explained softly.

“Can you sedate him again?” Jim asked.

“We’ve got a doctor coming over from across the hall. He’ll give Blair something that won’t interact with the medication he’s already had.”

Jim nodded and continued to move his hand in circles on his partner’s back and shoulder.

“Can you get him up into the chair?” the nurse asked.

“No, give it to him down here, then I’ll pick him up,” Jim said. Looking at the chair, he could easily summon the image of Sandburg when Lash had him. He wondered briefly how the kid could stand it.

An older man stepped into the room and introduced himself. “I’m Dr. Shelby, from across the hall,” he explained. “I understand your friend has never had a reaction to sedation before?”

“No, not that I know of. I don’t know what set him off,” Jim said.

“The nurse said he was agitated and anxious in the chair, so she gave him something to help him relax. He may have had a reaction to the gas,” the doctor said as he knelt and moved closer to Blair. “Some people don’t ever know that they’ll have a reaction until they do and his was especially bad. I gather he’s had a traumatic event involving a dentist?”

“No,” Jim replied with a sigh, “Just with the chair.”

The doctor was puzzled by the other man’s answer but passed it off as something not to be too deeply examined at the moment. He reached out and gently passed his hand over the younger man’s arm. Pulling up the sleeve of Blair’s tee shirt, he swabbed the skin with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol, then used his teeth to remove the cap from the syringe.

“Little stick,” he warned. Jim tightened his hold on Blair as he moaned and tried to pull away. The doctor quickly injected the medication and withdrew the needle. The nurse reached out to take the syringe, depositing it in the hazardous waste container bolted to the wall. “It’ll only take a minute or so, then you can move him,” the doctor said as he stood up and backed toward the doorway.

Jim used his senses to evaluate his Guide, knowing immediately when he slipped into a deep, relaxed sleep. Shifting his grip, he slid his hands under Blair’s legs and pulled the smaller body up into his arms. It was a struggle to get to his feet without hitting Sandburg’s curly head on anything but he finally managed to gently settle him in the chair.

“I need to be here when you wake him up,” he said to the nurse as she brought a fresh instrument tray into the room.

“Of course,” she agreed.

In the waiting room, Jim picked up a magazine and began to leaf through it; not because he was interested in anything on the pages, but to avoid the curious looks the other people were giving him. His cell phone rang a few minutes later and he took it into the hall before answering. Simon told him that it was quiet in the office and to take the rest of the afternoon off to take care of Blair. Jim thanked him, knowing that the Captain had a soft spot for Sandburg.

When he returned to the waiting room, he couldn’t resist giving a couple of the nosy-bodies an angry glare. He sat down and folded his arms across his chest.

“Mr. Ellison? We’re ready to move him now,” the nurse said as she stood in the doorway some time later. Jim got up and moved to step past her. He could almost feel the relief in the waiting room at his departure. He went to the room where he’d left Blair, noticing for the first time how much the dentist resembled Ernie Lash. Using his senses, he could tell that his Guide was still pretty deeply asleep and he wondered if they moved all their patients so soon after completing their dental work. The dentist and the nurse hung back as if they expected Blair to leap from the chair and attack them so Jim stepped in and began to try to rouse his lover. “Come on, Chief, it’s all over. Time to wake up,” he tapped Blair’s cheek with his fingers, taking care not to do it on the side where they had just finished the root canal.

After several minutes of patient coaxing, Jim managed to get Blair to sit up. He was getting ready to pull Sandburg to his feet when he heard what the groggy young man was saying.

“Do you see what they did to that little guy’s teeth?” Blair asked.

Jim looked around in confusion before his gaze came to rest on the colorful Disney wallpaper border that ran around the room near the drop ceiling. The ‘little guy’ was undoubtedly the rabbit from Bambi, the one with the pronounced teeth in the front.

“I had the craziest dream,” Blair continued, “These little guys with big noses … they wanted to mine the gold from my teeth! And there was this big guy … he had tree branches growing out of his head.”

Ignoring the muffled laughter from the nurse, Jim took hold of Blair and brought him to his feet. He followed the woman around to an open area with cots along the walls. She told him that Blair could lie down there until the sedative wore off completely. Jim eased his wobbly-legged lover down onto the cot and helped him to lie down without falling off. He grabbed one of the chairs from the stack in the corner and sat down next to the cot to watch Blair sleep.

Several minutes later, Blair groaned softly and reached for his jaw. Jim intercepted the groping hand and steered it away. He had to do it again a few minutes later because Blair kept trying to rub away the pain. The nurse handed Jim a plastic bag with a washcloth soaked in cold water to place against Blair’s cheek.

It took nearly half an hour for Blair to reach a point where the nurse felt that Jim could handle him on his own. She had come in and made the drowsy young man sit up, explaining that it would help him to wake up. Holding the plastic bag against his cheek, Blair squinted at Jim, then looked around the room questioningly. He spied the sign that said ‘recovery’ and let his eyes drift back to the man sitting practically at his knees.

“Is it over?” Blair asked, slurring his words because half of his mouth was still numb. He let the bag slip from his hand and tentatively touched his jaw.

“Yeah, all over, Chief?” Jim said.

“Oh, okay,” Blair said before letting go a massive yawn.

Standing at the counter with his partner swaying slightly on his feet, Jim listened to all of the directions for Blair, who was too out of it to follow along. The nurse explained that there would be no extra charge for Dr. Shelby and that he would probably be calling in a few hours to check on Blair.

While Jim talked to the people at the desk, Blair studied the folder lying on the counter. He saw his name on it and cocked his head to read the colorful stickers that had been applied to the manila surface. One was a warning sticker about a medication reaction and the other one made reference to notes in the folder. He reached out and flipped the cover open and read the large, block letters printed in red marker across the face page. ‘DO NOT PUT PATIENT IN ROOM #3 FOR ANY REASON!’ He wondered why. Before he could reason out why, Jim grabbed him by the arm and led him out of the office.

On the drive home, Blair was still subdued. He curled up on the seat with his numb cheek resting against Jim’s thigh. Jim passed his hand up and down Blair’s side in a soothing motion. Rather than turn on the radio, Jim found himself compelled to whistle. He hated that he was ear-wigged by that particular tune and hoped that his lover didn’t think he was making fun of him.

By the end of the first chorus of ‘Hi Ho, Hi Ho,’ Blair’s eyes sprang open and he turned his head, mouth open and gaping like a fish out of water. “I know that song! Why do I know that song?” he asked. “And why do I have these flashbacks of Dopey and Doc from Snow White rooting around in my mouth?”


End file.
